


Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

by njckle



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Post-Finale, Shakespeare Quotations, jlaire, post-transformation, troll!Claire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-05 17:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15175583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/njckle/pseuds/njckle
Summary: A human can't live among trolls indefinitely. Claire knows this and decides to adapt.





	Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

**Author's Note:**

> This AU came up in the trollhunters cry corner a while ago and it was too good for me _not_ to write it.

Claire wakes with a clear head and a heart beating a mile an hour.

The first face she sees isn’t the one she’d hope for, more blocky and with an extra set of eyes, but, despite not being exactly who she wants, she can’t find it in herself to be disappointed. Blinky smiles down at her with palpable relief. “Faire Claire! You have arisen!”

Four pairs of arms help her up into a sitting position and she looks around and finds that she’s in the cave they settled in for the past fortnight (or has it been longer?). Something about it seems off, but she can’t place it; it’s not as dark as she remembers, but just as damp. She ignores the trolls lingering in the shadows and instead makes a quick sweep of the area, looking for familiar dark hair and kind eyes.

And then she sees him.

“Jim,” she says and her heart stutters for a couple beats. With him standing so near, it all becomes so much more real. The change had been a decision, her decision. But now, suddenly, she’s nervous in a different kind of way, the good kind.

“Claire!” Jim smiles, awkwardly showing off all his teeth, then coughs in his hand. “You look…uh…”

Someone lets out a whistle. “Troll looks good on you, sister!”

Claire blinks, searching for the voice, and quickly spots something green and hairy. NotEnrique, though smaller than what she remembers, still wears a diaper smellier than all of trollkind. “You have to say that. You’re my troll brother.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not telling the truth.” NotEnrique says. “You’re a real knockout!”

Claire grins at the small troll, pleased at the comment.

“He’s right.” Blinky smiles down at her in what she hopes is pride. “You are a crystal among common geodes, Faire Claire.”

“Not bad,” Nomura sniffs a little ways off, lithe and elegant compared to the brutes around her, “if not a little small.” Despite her words, the changeling offers a small smile when no one’s looking and Claire thinks she has a friend should she need it.

“I assume you wish to take a look at your new, troll self?” Blinky asks. “Master Jim?”

All at once Jim becomes tense. Claire sees the minute clench of his jaw, how his ears press flat against his head, and frowns when he clutches at the small mirror in his hands.

NotEnrique is quicker than anyone gives him credit for. He jumps up, bouncing off Jim’s shoulder, and snatches the mirror from his grip. “Too slow, lover boy!” He tosses it at Claire without any fanfare, grinning that impish grin when she catches it without any effort. “Have at it, sis.”

Not one to beat around the bush, Claire does just that.

The first thing she notices are her eyes. The shape is all wrong, more slanted and framed by steely eyelashes, but the color is still the same. Brown, like her mother’s. It is the one thing that she recognized, not the lavender tinge to her skin nor the slender length of her neck.  She moves her head from side to side, trying to take in every angle with the small mirror. Her hair is a complete mess, no amount of hair clips able to control it and she laments about the loss. No tusks, but all her teeth are much sharper than she remembers; her nose is different, not like a regular trolls, almost cat-ish. She scrunches her face and the troll in the mirror does the same.

“Wow,” she says, because that’s all there is to say.

NotEnrique points at something behind her, looking almost gleeful. “And that’s not all your packing.”

Jim growls and Claire hears the warning in the pitch of it. Not knowing what to expect, she looks anyway.

“ _Oh_.”

Blinky, calm and collected, offers an explanation. “Ah, yes, this extremity is quite common. Many a troll have them—AAARRRGGHH included. Nothing worth worrying over.”

Claire doesn’t say anything, only stares at the lithe tail that’s protruding from her backside. That’s definitely something she didn’t expect.

There’s the sound of grating stone and Claire’s neck prickles from a sense of paranoia. It’s then that she notices, _really_ notices, that there’s a dozen or so trolls standing around, sharp gazes pinning onto her with the intensity of a circus goer beholding a new attraction. The attention snaps her back to reality. This isn’t the time to have a mini-meltdown over her new apendenge, so she calms herself with even breaths. Best to take this one step at a time.

“You must be needing some time to accustom yourself to your new body, yes?” Blinky offers the lifeline and Claire thinks her relief must be obvious because he nods in understanding. He turns to the crowd of trolls, waving his staff, even hitting one or two of them on the head. “Begone, all of you! Pester not, you rubbernecking fiends!”

There’s grumbling, but soon their interest in her dwindles to the occasional glances and they wander off to other caverns. Nearly half of them pat Jim on the back as they leave; he looks as confused as Claire.

Blinky looks pleased at his being listened to. He follows the general masses, continuing on with purpose. “Come along, Master Jim. We must prepare for the next move tomorrow night.”

“Actually,” Claire says, “Jim, could you stay?”

Their reaction is one Claire expected. They share an obvious look and, despite not actually being related in any way, the resemblance is striking. Either Blinky has mastered the range of human expression or the troll has rubbed off on Jim, their synchronization impeccable.

Blinky finds himself first. “These preparations are a serious matter, Faire Claire. Master Jim must be present or else—” He clears his throat, smiling awkwardly when Claire levels a hard stare at him. “Right. Yes. Call if you need anything.”

When the troll is gone, she looks at Jim with her new vision, noting the differences in her perception, how the shadows contours his face in the minimal lighting. He’d always been handsome to her, human or troll, but now she could actually _see_ every little detail.

She’s focused on him too long and he crouches before her, worried. “Are you feeling OK? You’re not dizzy or anything?”

His concern for her is a palpable thing, radiating off him in gentle waves. The current pulls his hand to grasp her own, four fingers trailing down her wrist to intertwine with her five, and she swallows a gasp. What had once felt like carved stone now feels likes plush velvet, warm and comforting to the touch.

She lifts her other hand and runs her knuckles over the curve of his cheek, gaze flickering across his handsome face when his breath hitches softly. His eyes are furrow, angled low to give his face a more fearsome expression than what she knows it to truly be, looking like a boy-knight playing king.

That was her Jim.

Claire smiles. After a moment or two of staring, Jim returns it.

It’s then that she realizes how she’s dressed. While her leggings are barely hanging on, not to mention her _skirt_ , she’s not completely exposed. She grips the sleeves of the sweater she’s wearing (she’d bought it for him in a thrift shop somewhere in New Mexico, the only one of its size), bunching at her wrists and two sizes too big even as a half-troll, inhaling the scent that she’s never really smelled, but recognized immediately. Jim must have given it to her when she was unconscious.

“Claire?”

A wave of affection rushes through her at the simple action. “I’m OK—better than OK, actually.”

The crease between his brows makes a quick reappearance. “That’s… good.” He’s staring at her unblinkingly, like he’s memorizing all of her just as she is of him, the blue of his eyes drawing her in closer.

Claire tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, somewhat flustered about the whole ordeal, only to reach further back when her knuckles knock on something hard; she’d have to get used to her horns being in the way. She fingers the tips of her ears and thinks that they’re quite like a fairy’s in one of the many poems she’s read. Jim’s face is anxious when she explores the rest of her new body, prodding at her nose and chin, taking stock of her hands and how her nails curl like a cat’s. One look at her feet and she finds that her toes are the same. Behind her, her tail twitches and it’s a strange feeling, having an extra limb.

“You’re taking this really well.”

Claire gets to her feet. She has the sudden urge to see if she can touch the stalactites above when she jumps. Drops of water fall in a unnamed rhythm that echoes across the caverns, the _drip drip drip_ rebounding against the walls to repeat back to her. “We planned this, remember?” Well, she planned and he worried and argued over her decision the weeks before.

“Yeah, but…” Jim watches her twist to try and spot her tail. “You don’t feel like your going to freak out?”

“It’s fine, Jim,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“But—”

She bends to tap him on the nose, something she started doing ever since they left Arcadia when she found out it’d make his ears wiggle. They do just that, to her immediate pleasure. “You still haven’t told me how I look.”

He makes a noncommittal motion at the mirror. “You already know that everyone was telling the truth.”

“But I’m asking you.” When he struggles to answer, worry begins to gnaw at her. Maybe this wasn’t the right choice (she thinks of Enrique and her parents, of Mary and Darci, and every person in her life she has undoubtedly stripped herself of, and _was I wrong?_ ) “Do you not like me like this?”

“No!” The outburst startles Claire and Jim quickly gets to his feet and makes a move to embrace her, but stops just short. “No—I—it’s just different than what I’m used to.”

“Bad different or good different?”

“Good different! You smell—I mean, you’ve always smelled good to me, but now it’s… more distracting?” He stops, groans, then rubs his face, muttering, “That’s not weird at all.”

Claire giggles, her fears taking a backseat in favor of the feelings that the trollboy in front of her alight in her chest. She steps closer. “Nope. What else?”

“Your eyes,” he says immediately. He makes a goofy grin. “ _Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven…_ ”

Claire tries to smother her laugh, but ultimately fails. “I’m pretty sure there’s more after that line, Romeo.”

“You sound the same too,” Jim sighs and Claire thinks he’s saying it more to himself than her. He reaches forward to stroke her cheek. “And your smile is still the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It makes the sun weep with the disappointment that it can’t shine as bright.”

“Now that’s a line worthy of Shakespeare.” Now more than ever she wonders how she got to have such an amazing boyfriend. When she was little, she wondered how her love life would turn out (not like Romeo and Juliet, but rather like Perdita and Florizel, Miranda and Ferdinand, or even Imogen and Posthumus), and her fantasies, while not fitting exactly with what she imagined, seemed to adapt perfectly into her reality. Jim was a literal knight in shining armor, even with the horns, and someone worth changing for.

“No troll nose.” He leans in close to study her face. “And you have freckles.”

Claire feels her tail curl at the proximity. They’re toe-to-toe now, and she’s immensely pleased that she’s eye level with his mouth again. “Anything else?”

“What else is there to say? No matter what you are, I’ll still love you.”

She throws her arms around him and kisses him straight on the mouth at the familiar words. It’s supposed to be a quick press of their lips, but she lingers, pushing harder and harder until she’s sure that she would’ve broken his nose if they were still wholly human. In it she tries to instill every ounce of feeling she has for him, pushing the months they’ve been together into one moment.

She pulls back and breathes. “That was…”

“Different?” Jim shrugs, his hair disheveled. “Kissing is for humans. Killing is easier for trolls—at least that’s what Draal told me when we talked about it.”

Claire wonders why he’d be talking about kissing with a troll in the first place, but doesn’t question him. She’ll get it out of him sooner or later. “So what do trolls do?”

“Probably try to fight each other to the death.” He suddenly eyes her warily. “Why?”

Claire thinks back to so long ago when Blinky pit her against Jim to test his abilities. How he’d dodged her every attack, leaving her in the dust and thoroughly frustrated. It might be the troll in her, but she’s suddenly insistent to do something—anything. She wants get out of this cave, see the moonlight, feel the air on her new skin. Most of all, she wants to see what she can do, see the limits she can overcome.

And, well, if she gets payback on her boyfriend…that wouldn’t be too bad either.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr: [njcklenjart](http://njcklenjart.tumblr.com)
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!


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